Google Uses Artificial Brains to Teach Its Data Centers How to Behave

At Google, artificial intelligence isn't just a means of building cars that drive on their own, smartphone services that respond to the spoken word, and online search engines that instantly recognize digital images. It's also a way of improving the efficiency of the massive data centers that underpin the company's entire online empire. According to Joe Kava, the man who oversees the design and operation of Google's worldwide network of data centers, the web giant is now using artificial neural networks to analyze how these enormous computing centers behave, and then hone their operation accordingly. These neural networks are essentially computer algorithms that can recognize patterns and then make decisions based on those patterns. They can't exactly duplicate the intelligence of the human brain, but in some cases, they can work much faster–and more comprehensively–than the brain. And that's why Google is applying these algorithms to its data center operations.